User talk:Smeat75/Archive 1

Franz, Duke of Bavaria

Told the other editor that he, like you, is at 3RR and that the comma is clearly disputed. I've reinstated the tags. Dougweller (talk) 07:25, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Your royalty edits

You've made so many edits to so many articles on royalty that are being reverted that I would recommend discussing your concerns in a central location like WT:NCNT. Seven Letters 16:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

That is going to be a location watched over, I would guess, by royalty "fans" who have a bias in favour of the use of honorifics etc. The whole point to me is that once a royal title is abolished the ex-holder is not royal any more so I don't feel it would be useful to get an opinion from "Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)", the edits I have been making have been to articles about people who are not royal or noble at all, but some people want to pretend that they are and continue to use phoney titles and honorifics that were abolished nearly 100 years ago. I may try and get an outside opinion from someone I consider neutral.Smeat75 (talk) 18:42, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Are you yourself neutral? There are plenty of royal academics who are not royalty fans. And that page is watched over by royalists and non-royalists alike. Wikipedia isn't here to reflect the legal situations of various former monarchies. Royal titles have extralegal and social use up to and through this current day. That is what is demonstrated and established. We do not have to use individuals' exact legal names here. Seven Letters 18:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

We don't have to use antiquated honorifics like "HI&RH" either and we should not, the German Empire and all that folderol was abolished in 1919, none of those people are any more royal or noble now than your pet hamster, you could call him "Your Kingly and Majestic Highness Prince Max of Saxe-Gotha-Someplacethatdoesn'tevenexistanymore" if you want to but it wouldn't mean anything and neither does it in those cases, it is mere pretense, misleading, inaccurate and phoney.Smeat75 (talk) 19:01, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Royalty dispute

Yesterday and today I have been involved in a dispute about WP articles about members of deposed German royal families. All German royal and noble titles were abolished in 1919, but there are hundreds of articles here in WP about living members of these families that attribute "styles and titles" to them, use their abolished royal titles as if they still exist, and prefix their names with abbreviations such as "HSH", which means "His (or Her) Serene Highness", or "HRH" Her (or His) Royal Highness" or "HI&RH" which means His or Her Imperial and Royal Highness and was used by members of the ruling family of the German Empire which ended in 1918 and all those appellations became void of any meaning. A relevant secondary source -[1] from Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany by Jonathan Petropoulos,Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College: "aristocratic titles were abolished during the Weimar Republic after the fall of the monarchy. As of 1919 aristocratic titles were merged into the individual's name. Therefore the Prince of Bavaria or the Prince of Baden actually was not a title but a name....(a member of an ex-royal family noted)'actually most people today confuse the name with a title. They also use expressions like "Royal Highness","Highness" and "Serene Highness" (Durchlaucht) and forget that we live in a republic.'" As that ex-royal says, people are "confused" and think because ex-royals were allowed to change their names to, for instance Max Prince of Prussia, they think they still have titles and should be addressed by those honorifics "Your Royal Highness" etc, but they do not have titles any more, "Prince of Prussia" is just his legal last name and therefore those signifiers of royal status, which are carefully graded in importance, "serene highness" is less than "royal highness", "imperial and royal highness" is even higher, are no longer appropriate. Hundreds of these articles about "royals" who are not royal at all because all the titles were abolished in 1919 exist and most of them have navboxes like this one - Template:Prussian Royal Family or this one Template:Hanoverian Royal Family.I strongly, vehemently, fiercely object to those templates, they call living people members of a royal family, they are not, they are the people who would be the royal family if there were one, but there isn't and as a matter of fact there are not even such places as Prussia or a state of Hanover any more!Then those templates list ten or more people as "HRH" or "HSH" or so on, that is false, it is misleading, they are not. I do not object so much to them being called Prince and Princess etc., they do have "Prince" as part of their names, but I find it intolerable to see those archaic courtly ritualised honorific abbreviations being used for living people who do not possess royal titles. I revised several of those templates, changing the name for instance of "Hanoverian Royal Family" to "House of Hanover" and removing the "HRH" and so forth but leaving the names "Princess of this or that" as they are, but I was reverted. Then I tagged the templates, but I was told I was being disruptive and making a mess and the tags were removed. Then I said I was going to tag every article those templates were being used on for accuracy and neutrality and several other editors think I am way out of line and just take the tags off the articles. They say it doesn't matter that those royal titles were all abolished, people still use them anyway, at least that's as much as I can make out of their reason for saying that hundreds of WP articles must continue to state, falsely, that so and so is His Royal Highness Prince of This Place that Doesn't Even Exist Any More. I hope one of the advocates of the "other side" will present their point of view below and also say just why they think I am being such a horrible pest, or troll, or whatever it is they think I have been.Smeat75 (talk) 21:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Per Lethiere at Talk:Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples#Titular, "...English Wiki...seeks some consistency in how it deals with similar situations across nations. Germany, for instance, incorporates former royal titles into the surname, and allows their use socially as titles. Its next door neigbor Austria forbids both legal (e.g. documents) and official (e.g. phone listings) usage. Austria's neighbor, Liechtenstein, not only allows use of foreign monarchical titles, but uses them itself (the reigning Prince's grandmother was an Austrian archduchess). Italy's legal stance [non-recognition of titles/styles] applies to government, not to society. In fact, when the Italian president greeted Vittorio Emanuele upon his return to Italy, he referred to him as "Prince", which was objected to by the socialist party leadership -- but not by the other parliamentary parties. The Italian media, like most media the world over, varies depending upon its political slant, and is notoriously inconsistent -- how an ex-royal is titled often depends upon which editor happens to be in charge the day that a story about royalty is filed for publication. We should certainly acknowledge and report the Italian state's position, but we are not an arm of that state. Conversely, the advantage of the Gotha convention is that it has been much more carefully elaborated than republican conventions on titles, is widely adhered to by those who have most occasion to mention royalty in print, and ignoring an already widely used convention puts WP in the position of inventing its own standard, since no other exists supranationally. For instance, legally there is no difference between Vittorio Emanuele's former title and those of any Joe Blow in Italy suffering from delusions of grandeur who declares himself "Prince of Naples". But the Gotha's convention would unhesitatingly distinguish between someone whose dynasty reigned over part or all of Italy for the last millenium and someone who merely needs to be reminded to take his morning meds. That convention is quite clear: deposed royalty get to keep a modified version of their titles; their descendants also get to use titles, but not (for the pretender, his wife and his heir) the same ones as were used under the monarchy -- thus the Gotha convention does defer to the reality of royal depositions and exiles. That convention has indeed been influenced by monarchists -- because they are the folks who care enough about how ex-royalty is styled to develop coherent rules and adhere to them. Nonetheless, encyclopedic practice has been to make use of the Gotha tradition: The legitimist French pretender's legal name may have been "Henri d'Artois", but he will be found in Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition under Henri, comte de Chambord -- and in every other encyclopedia and journal of public record except, perhaps, those of the French Republic during his lifetime. Encyclopedic precedent is not to substitute legal name for royal titulature once a monarchy has been abolished -- or ex-King Constantine II of Greece would be known everywhere (instead of just among anti-monarchists) as 'Constantine Glucksburg'." FactStraight (talk) 06:18, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Smeat75 has made it clear he intends to continue ignoring: that Wikipedia assertions of fact must be sourceable to reliable publications (yet many such publications have been and can be adduced in support of the styles and titulature he is on a mission to delete); that content is the product of consensus as documented on the talk page (yet he ignores the fact that most commenters have disagreed with his edits and argumentation); that articles are not subject to ownership (yet after being reverted and disputed he insists that his preferred version be Wikipedia's version); and that dialogue and compromise are how Wikipedia articles are shaped (yet he asserts I just don't like it, repeating the same argument ("these styles/titles have been abolished in German law") despite being told repeatedly by different contributors on different talk pages why that rationale is insufficient and unacceptable ("German law does not determine how people are referred to in English-speaking society or on English Wikipedia"); that qualifications and modfications which address his stated objections have been or can be included (footnotes which acknowledge the non-legal status of styles/titles/claims); that it is a long protocolar tradition dating back to Napoleon's era and gazetted since then in the Almanach de Gotha and its extant variations that members of deposed dynasties continue to be accorded a version of their regnant honorifics on ceremonial occasions as a courtesy (whereas his judgment is that people who use styles/titles are "confused", fail to behave in an "appropriate" fashion, and need to be corrected by Wikipedia); and that the many years and hundreds of editors who have edited this and similar articles in a different direction than his, but entirely in good faith -- while not making any particular edit "right" -- do not merit the relentless contempt and vituperation he exudes while editing. FactStraight (talk) 06:18, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the trouble to come here and comment, FactStraight, I appreciate it. A few remarks on what you say in your first paragraph: Not everyone who comes to an article on WP is going to be an expert on royalty, obviously. A distinction needs to be made on WP between royal titles which are held as an official status and those which are not. It could be very confusing to a lot of people, because "HRH" is used both for Charles, Prince of Wales, who is officially a prince, and someone like Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, who is the person that would be German Emperor if they still had one but has no official status as a prince, unlike Charles. I was confused about it myself for years, when I saw those "HRH" and other honorific abbreviations in front of living people who are members of the families of deposed German royal houses I thought it had the same significance, an official status, as it does in the case of British royalty but it does not, this needs to be explained to WP readers.You link to Gotha where it explains "Titles of pretence below sovereign rank were accorded to members of formerly reigning dynasties as reported by heads of their houses". This is the, very revealing and truthful word in my opinion, used by royalty experts themselves to describe "the person who would be king of this place if they still had one"- he is the pretender. The titles given to the family of this person are described, right there,as titles of pretence and that is exactly what they are - they are all pretending that they have the titles they would have possessed as an official status had those titles not been abolished by the government of their countries. Constantine of Greece is a special case, as he was actually a reigning king at one time.I kicked up a fuss at the article Franz, Duke of Bavaria, the person who would have been king of Bavaria had not all German royal titles been abolished in 1919, which until today just flatly said his "Style and Title" was "His Royal Highness The Duke of Bavaria". This has now been amended, by other users not me, which makes me feel the struggle has been worth it, to "Franz uses the titles "Duke of Bavaria, of Franconia and in Swabia; Count Palatine of the Rhine". The prefix "His Royal Highness" is used, but is a gesture of politeness and has no legal status in Germany. Under German law royal titles are not recognised legally, but can be used as a part of a surname." If such a clarification could be made in every single article or template where these "HSH" and so forth abbreviations are used, that would solve the problem, but that clarification cannot be made in those navboxes which is why those honorific abbreviations need to be removed from them and the names changed from things like "Prussian royal family" to "House of Hohenzollern".Smeat75 (talk) 04:19, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

A few remarks on FactStraight's second paragraph - "he intends to continue ignoring that Wikipedia assertions of fact must be sourceable to reliable publications" - actually I have provided many reliable sources that say that German titles of royalty and nobility were all abolished in 1919. - "German law does not determine how people are referred to in English-speaking society or on English Wikipedia"- of course not, but the fact that German law abolished German royal and noble titles means that they do not have any validity and WP should not mislead readers into thinking that they have some official status, it should be explained, every time, that they do not. Camelbinky below tells me that the German government could not have abolished royal titles as such titles cannot be abolished by any government, I'm afraid I would need to see a reliable source for that statement before I could agree with it, whereas I can easily find hundreds of reliable sources that say that the German government did abolish all German royal titles in 1919. There is no policy or guideline that WP has to follow that monarchists' handbook the Almanach de Gotha. "his judgment is that people who use styles/titles are "confused", fail to behave in an "appropriate" fashion, and need to be corrected by Wikipedia" Some people who call pretenders "Your royal highness" are confused, not all of them. To clarify - when I say it is not appropriate to use "HRH" and so forth for pretenders and their families I meant that it is not appropriate for WP to do so without explaining that they have no official status, not that it would be inappropriate in real life for anyone to call them those things. "the relentless contempt and vituperation he exudes while editing"- I am not sure what this can be referring to, I have not called other editors names or made personal attacks. I have once or twice referred to royal naming conventions and so on as "folderol" and made quite a few comparisons such as the one higher up on this page," none of those people are any more royal or noble now than your pet hamster, you could call him "Your Kingly and Majestic Highness Prince Max of Saxe-Gotha-Someplacethatdoesn'tevenexistanymore" if you want to but it wouldn't mean anything", maybe those sorts of comments are what FactStraight means.Smeat75 (talk) 04:40, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

For Liz's attention - Obviously I am not asking you to pronounce on the rights or wrongs of the content of the dispute, but can you at least see that there is a valid dispute here? Does it leap out at you that I am way out of line either in pursuing this dispute or in my conduct in the way I have been disputing this issue? Thank you very much for your opinion. Smeat75 (talk) 04:52, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I have no opinion on whether or not these templates and categories should or should not exist. In the time I've been active on Wikipedia, I've learned to choose my battles and I couldn't read more than 2/3 of this argument before my eyes glazed over. We don't have royals in the U.S. so what little I know comes from European history classes.

But what I do believe in is process. Smeat75, you might have a valid argument but this can't be a one person show, WP operates by consensus. If you continue to make categorical or template edits or suggest deletes, I can guarantee you that you will be reverted or these articles will be recreated because there is a group of Wikipedia editors who have this as a primary interest (Wikipedia:WikiProject Royalty)...right or wrong, you're outnumbered and as much as you hate these titles, I imagine that members of this WikiProject care more about it than you do.

My suggestion is to isolate one system of royal titles that you find most galling or incongruous in a 21st century world and bring it to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Royalty talk page and argue your case. I would try to table the hostility you seem to feel and focus on the inaccuracies of these titles in a modern society. You start venting and other editors will just ignore you. Try persuasion and, who knows, you might find that there is some agreement with your position.

I'm going through something similar right now with my work with categorization. There is an editor who believes that every group who is said to be "of Jewish descent" should also be categorized of being "of Asian descent" even if these groups left the Middle East a thousand years ago. We both believe we are correct. So, I took the question to Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism since Project members have more invested than I do. At first, the consensus was clearly going my way but now some opposition has arisen. I'm not sure whose opinion will eventually win out but I am sure that if I had continued doing what I was doing, I'd be getting myself in an edit war in which there is now winner.

So in summary, try to discuss this dispassionately, get allies on your side, don't go it alone, have a compelling argument, take the dispute to a forum where the editors who post there will have an opinion even if you don't think they will agree with you. I hope this helps. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:08, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Very very helpful indeed Liz, thank you so much, I know the way royalty buffs start throwing around references to titles being gazetted in the Almanach de Gotha and so on makes most peoples' eyes glaze over, I appreciate you ploughing through five paragraphs of it for me.Smeat75 (talk) 04:01, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Where nobility and royalty come from per your question

Per the question you posited regarding "where their titles come from", it varies according to title and according to region/nation. Please remember the concept of "Germany" as a nation is a relatively new concept. After the Treaty of Westminster (1600s) Hanover, Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, etc would all have been considered nation-states on the level of France, England, Portugal, Sweden, etc. For Hanover and a lot of those other German states, their ruler's "right" to be a king, or duke or prince stems from that treaty. Probably the first time in Europe's history a nation's right to be a certain "level" or nobility or royalty was conferred upon by fact that a bunch of other nations in a treaty said they could be such. Prior to that it would have been the Catholic Pope making the declaration "Your a king", "your an Emperor". Even as late as Napoleon, it was the Pope crowning him Emperor (though technically Napoleon took the crown from the Pope and placed it on his own head during the ceremony). For Hanover's history, it was Prussia after the Austrian-Prussian War when Hanover was invaded by Prussia and forced to become part of a unified Germany that Prussia decided "Oh, there's no longer a Hanover with a King"... well, the invasion and annexation being "illegal" of course the Hanoverian royalty said "screw you, you cant do that". Lesser titles are bestowed upon by higher ups in return for vassalage, or sometimes they are self-anointed, or sometimes elected from nobles within, such as the Holy Roman Emperor, or even the Pope (who reigns as the temporal King of the Vatican a separate title from that of the religious Pope). In those cases the higher ups may or may not have the right to "take back" the titles. Before the Hundred Years War between France and England when the King of England claimed to be the king of France technically the King of England was already a vassal to whoever was the king of France due to the titles of nobility that the English king also held through his territory, some of which could indeed be taken back by the King, others such as Aquitaine could not. In the end, really what makes one have a title or not, is whether or not OTHERS with titles, and more importantly power, recognize you as such. If you look at nobility less as a title in the lines of "Congressman" or "Senator" and more in line with being a member of an elite club; once your a Mason, or Kiwanis, or Old Fellows, or a religion such as being Catholic, Jewish, Hindu your title as being one of them is dependent on how that club sees you, not on how the country you live in sees you. The state of New York can say I'm not a member of Kiwanis, can pass a law abolishing Kiwanis, can forbid us from meeting, but if Kiwanis members continue to meet secretly our outside the borders of NY, then we are all still Kiwanis members. A country that forbids religious freedom can claim all their citizens are athiests, but in reality if someone is a Catholic, they are Catholic regardless if the state says they have the right to be so.Camelbinky (talk) 14:37, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the comment, very interesting.Smeat75 (talk) 01:56, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Canvassing to win poll on royal titulature

Hello. It appears that you have been canvassing—leaving messages on a biased choice of users' talk pages to notify them of an ongoing community decision, debate, or vote—in order to influence Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#Use of royal "Titles and styles" and honorific prefixes in articles and templates referring to pretenders to abolished royal titles and their families. While friendly notices are allowed, they should be limited and nonpartisan in distribution and should reflect a neutral point of view. Please do not post notices which are indiscriminately cross-posted, which espouse a certain point of view or side of a debate, or which are selectively sent only to those who are believed to hold the same opinion as you. Remember to respect Wikipedia's principle of consensus-building by allowing decisions to reflect the prevailing opinion among the community at large. You risk invalidating your own poll because you appear to be recruiting selected individuals, informing them of your preferred stance on an issue, and then inviting them to !vote on that issue. FactStraight (talk) 08:06, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Please tell me how I have been canvassing, I have been following the guidelines at [2]WP:RFC it says " you may publicize the RfC by posting a notice at one or more of the following locations-One of the Village Pump forums, such as those for policy issues, proposals, or miscellaneous-Noticeboards such as point-of-view noticeboard, reliable source noticeboard, or original research noticeboard-Talk pages of editors listed in the Feedback Request Service. You must select editors from the list at random; you cannot pick editors that will be on "your side" in a dispute", where I have just been going down the list leaving messages on the talk pages of users who have said they wouldn't mind contributing to more than two or so discussions a month, I have no idea if any of these people agree with me about these things, in fact I should think it is more likely that they have absolutely no knowledge of or interest in such esoteric arcana. I purposely did not notify my wiki friend Liz who I consulted and asked her if she thought I was being a jerk about all this, even though she told me she had no opinion about royalty and just reading about this dispute made her eyes glaze over.Smeat75 (talk)

I would aim towards saying you were in fact canvassing as I have been in direct talks with you being on the opposite view as you and yet you never let me know about this discussion you were starting. Luckily I have most "back office" pages on Wikipedia watchlisted.Camelbinky (talk) 21:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't got to you yet, when I received the message above from FactStraight I stopped leaving messages on individual talk pages.Smeat75 (talk) 21:29, 27 November 2013 (UTC)